I will be in Sitiawan tomorrow

Folks, I will be in Sitiawan tomorrow for some personal event and it is going to be a long drive from KL. on the highway is not too bad but once you have to take the trunk road is when the excitement takes place.

I usually like taking the trunk roads because it is more picturesque and you get to see all the kampungs on the way which is becoming rather scarce due to urbanization.

Sitiawan is indeed a unique place especially when at least one of my friends calls it CT-A-One/CT-A-1. The story behind how Sitiawan got its name is even more unique.

So the story goes on to explain that there were once these 2 elephants in the area who were bosom buddies. One unfortunate day, one of the elephants got stuck in quick sand and was fast drowning. Not being able to see its friend suffer, the other elephant stretched out its trunk to try and pull the other elephant. However neither made it and the elephant that was trying to help did not want to let go of its friend hence the name "setia kawan" or now over time, "Setiawan". This story may not be true but it serves a strong lesson in life such as trust and loyalty. These are some qualities that are fading and people have become more impersonal.

I hope I have entertained you thus far or maybe put you to sleep but either way, you benefit ;)

Will post something if anything interesting happens in CT-A-One.


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Vixstarr.blogspot.com now mobile friendly!

My blog is now mobile friendly! Please inform everyone you know to subscribe to my blog. It may be boring but worth a read ;)

We have tested it out on iPhones and androids but have not tested it on Symbians and other OSes. If you have a Symbian phone please test it out and let me know. The blog works fine with iOS and android. Nice layout and readability.

I am speaking as though I coded the whole thing but trust me, it is just a checkbox in Blogger ;)

Having said that it is still important for me to maintain the readability of the site.

I am looking for more improvements to the blog so stay tuned :)


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#ITwtf

So, my wife told me that my vege mon stories are rather dry which is something I have to agree with because not many people like gardening and science ;)

In view of this, this blogpost will be something other than gardening. The problem I have is that I am at the moment "Kering Idea" the only thing that I can think is the hash tag that I started in Twitter where I am the only contributor. It is called #ITwtf . The reason I named it so is because of the blunders that we all do on a daily basis when it comes to computers or the general usage of IT.

I am from the IT industry and I have made mistakes that would make me think "what the flying fuck did I just do?"

We think machines are complicated but in reality, they are not; we just fail to read the bloody manual and this is ever prevalent especially in the male of the species!

Men and manuals are like two opposite sides of the spectrum, they can never meet! But trust me, it does a whole lot of good to read the damn manual because you will be surprised to find that you were doing it wrong all the time. /me thinks: do women come with manuals?

Anyway, #ITwtf is not only limited to me. If you have an IT blunder that you did or someone else did, please post it in twitter under this hash tag.

I would love to post all the posts under that hash tag but I will save it for another day when there is something that was contributed to it from anyone but me.

Bear in mind that IT "experts" make the silliest mistakes like clicking Shift+delete only to realize that they deleted the wrong bloody file and it cannot be brought back to life!

So please, you and I are not spared from stupidity!


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Come mr. Vege mon, grow me some bananas

The title for this blogpost is to be sung to the tune of day-o (ref: beetlejuice)

The plants are progressing well especially with the spell of rain that we have been receiving. All the plants now are being grown under full sun which we in the equator are lucky because we do not really need greenhouses to plant tropical plants and plants will not suffer from frost and so on.

As you can see from the photos below, all of the plants except the lettuce have grown considerably well.

I still have one more plant to plant which is the cili padi. I have run out of soil so I have not had the chance to plant it yet and cili padi is my favorite. It goes well with any dish.

I remember back home (my hometown of Penang) my dad, elder sister and I would always have a cili padi in hand when eating, One mouth of rice and one bite of the cili padi... Oh, the bliss! Some say we northerners have a tolerance for spice, we can basically eat anything that is spicy and if it is not, you know we're not going to be satisfied. This reminds me of a colleague of mine who is from sungai petani. We were once in this kelantanese shop in dengkil where they serve some pretty good Tom yam and their signature dish called nasi goreng Malee. My colleague ordered the belacan and poured it all on his rice and requested for sliced cili padi. The waiter was surprised and he warned my colleague that the belacan is already very spicy. My colleague being a northerner said, I know, but it is not spicy enough for me so bring me the cili padi. The waiter obliged.

I know this article has deviated a little bit but hey, not everyone wants to read about plants now do they?

So yeah, I still have that cili padi seeds which I am itching to grow.

I leave you now with the pictures.







Okra/ladies fingers







Eggplant







Lettuce. See that green spot?







Tomato







Chili

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Tamil Nasyid

There was this video shared by one of the people I follow on Twitter (@bmahendran) where you have 4 Malay chaps singing a religious song in perfect harmony.

Not only was the harmony perfect but the pronunciation as well. Now, Tamil is not an easy language to master because of the following reasons:

1. Pronunciation
2. Grammar
3. It is just too complicated

These boys who sang a whole song in Tamil have to be saluted because it is not their mother tongue and they actually took the time and pain to learn the pronunciation. Even my pronunciation isn't that great and Tamil being my mother tongue.

The reason why I am so amazed is because and especially of their pronunciation of the character "zha" which is pronounced "Ra" with your tongue touching your palate. See it is even complicating to explain the process. However, these boys do it with ease!

Non of our local Tamil guys have attempted to do what these boys have done.
Disclaimer: I have not heard local Tamil harmonized singing before so may be wrong and stand to be corrected

P.s. This reminds me of Boys to Men. Good R&B music. One reference would be colours of love by Boys to Men.

I now leave you with the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odH8CJ1QbO0&feature=youtube_gdata_player




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I have got my plants, now where are them zombies?

Hello and welcome to this week's addition of vege mon (pronounced as man in a Jamaican accent).

Do not quote me on this but did you know that a country is under threat if it does not have agriculture. This is something that I was told during one of my courses.

I believe that is true because the people will run out of food supplies should there be a war. I mean that statement was a no brainer but I am just stating the obvious because some people may have been attacked by zombies and had their brains eaten.

By the way if you're wondering why the title for this article makes no sense is because you have not played plants vs zombies. Do not know that one then google it. I have given out enough simple interpretations.

Well anyway, this week my plants have not made much progress Except for the okra, tomatoes and chili. Okras are sprouting new leaves and shedding the old ones whilst the chili and tomato are growing quite fast. The brinjal still looks like it is creeping on a come up but the lettuce has not grown any taller but the leaves are starting to take shape.

The problem with lettuce is that if it is not grown properly, the leaves will become leathery and not very pleasant to eat. I would not know the fate of my lettuce now so I guess would have to wait.

It has been more than a month now since I planted these crops so it is going to take another 2 or 3 months before I can see any fruits.

I will now leave you with some pictures.











Okra and some of my homemade fertilizers. I have to read up
More on fertilizers and compost because I do not believe those 2 words are interchangeable. I say fertilizer because it helps the plant grow providing it with nutrients but it ain't made of dung. So guys, please help me find the right term.










Brinjal a.k.a eggplant










Tomato










Chili.

P.s: did you guys know that okra/ladies finger is actually part of the same family as hibiscus? Well yes it is. Hence the similarities in the leaves.

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Farming is my middle name

First of all let me apologize for the late post! Come to think of it, I may be very well apologizing to my self!

I was busy watching my new pet robot clean the house, no it is not like the robot that you remember from the cartoon Jetsons but more of a combination of those toys you see in pasar malam where They bounce off a barrier and move in the opposite direction and a vacuum cleaner. I am talking about the picabot. It vacuums the floor on its own and also sanitizers the place with a laser gun :p I lied, it is a UV light. Although I may understand its coding algorithm isn't that great, but anything with the name 'bot (robot) in it is cool!

Anyway, back to the perishables, so, the okra has grown taller, the brinjal has made some amount of progress and the lettuce does not look like it is going to survive. However, the chili and tomato is looking pretty good. Might be because I am using separate pots for these plants.

With the brinjal and lettuce, I had to get rid of some of them to make sure I only have the best plant. This is done so that the plants get enough nutrients. It was a difficult process because as i have mentioned in my previous post, I believe that if any plant made it that far, then they are heroes. If had more pots, chances are I would have planted more of the same plant.

Anyway, I shall leave you with the pictures.







The okra, tallest in the class.







Brinjal, creeping on a come up!







Lettuce - I'd be surprised if it makes it.

And the heroes for the week:






Chili







Tomato

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Me no vege mon today!

Hello! First of all selamat berpuasa to my Muslim friends. Hope you guys are blessed abundantly during this holy month.

This week I am not going to be blogging about my vegetable patch as I am not in Selangor but in my hometown of Butterworth, Penang. In turn if you like it or don't, I am going to blog about my mom's garden instead. Her garden is one of my inspirations for my own patch.

Although my mom's garden is not particularly only vegetables but it includes some flowers as well. All of her plants are grown in pots like mine and they do bear fruit.

Some of the plants include indian herbs such as "karpura valli" or Oregano as it is known in English. There is also "Thulasi" also known as Holy Basil. These plants come in handy especially when you are having a flu or if you need to rid your chest of phlegm. They don't taste great especially oregano which is pungent and chewing on a leaf is pretty beneficial flu or not. They grow easily and look like a shrub.

There are also a number of plants that can't be eaten and if you insist may kill you. A very good example is oleander. It is a beautiful flowering plant and often used for landscaping but beauty comes with a heavy price!

Here are some of the pictures.







An overview of the garden.







Oregano - good for curing flu symptoms.







Japanese Rose - beautiful flowers and used for landscaping as well. Don't know of it is edible and I do not want to take the risk of eating it ;)







What I believe is pineapple but never seen it fruit!







Some ornamental bamboo and I have known this plant ever since I can remember which could put this plants age at about 27 years old because moved to Butterworth when I was 3.







This pot holds two plants Pegaga (not lady gaga, no! It is used as Ulam in Malay cuisines. It is also known as Pennywort in English) and also tomato. The tomato plant is still not mature enough to bear fruit.







This fellow right here is the infamous oleander. This lil' mufacka has the potential to kill by ingesting just 1 leaf. I told my mom to throw it as we occasionally have kids in the house and you never know what they put in their mouths.







Some palm which I am not so fond of. I hate palm (except maybe for coconut) and I think I am prejudice towards palm as I do not believe they serve any purpose. One of the reasons could be because it destroyed the estate where my parents are from! It was a rubber estate until they wiped it out to make way for palm oil... Sheesh! Okay, it is not the palms' fault but hey I need some plants to blame!







Pandan, beybee! I love the smell. Also know as daun chendol. No fancy English name.







"Pasalai keerai" or also known as Indian spinach. "Keerai" in Tamil generally refers to vegetables.







"Thulasi" or holy basil. Just placing some of these leaves in a cup of water may do you some good. Hence why it is used in holy water (for Hindus)







Money plant. I love these guys. Very hardy plants. There was once when I moved to my new place and did not water it for a week and there was no rain either, but the dude survived despite having looking dried but with some water afterwards, my money plant is doing well.







And last but not least is the Feng Shui plant. These guys are lush and when they flower, they churn out a flower that looks like a mini tumbleweed. I think it looks cool.

So there you have it. A walk through my mom's garden. I have not asked her any permission to publish this so please don't tell her. I mean it. Some of my cousins do read this blog! Save me a beating :P

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